I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for determining the location of gunfire from a moving object.
II. Description of Related Art
The location of gunfire, especially sniper gunfire, is an active research area for the military. Currently, there are several commercial systems that are available on the market that detect gunfire and determine the location of the source of the gunfire, typically through multilateration using time difference of arrival (TDOA) of the gunshot received by an array of microphones.
These previously known commercial systems, however, are for the most part stationary systems although, in one case, the gunshot localization system is soldier worn. In either case, the gunshot localization system is generally arranged in an area that is audibly quiet. As such, the identification of gunfire by the system is a simple and straightforward process.
While the previously known systems operate satisfactorily when deployed in an acoustically quiet position, none of these previously known systems work satisfactorily when used on a moving vehicle. In particular, moving vehicles, such as jeeps, tanks, armored vehicles, etc., all generate a great deal of noise not only from the vehicle engine and drive train, but also wheel/tire noise from their engagement with the ground. Furthermore, since such microphones would necessarily be mounted on the outside of the vehicle, such microphones would be subject to airflow noise which only increases with the increasing speed of the vehicle.
As a result, the whole vehicle platform is subject to vibrations that resonate in the body of the vehicle. These platform noises are also detected by the vehicle mounted acoustic microphones of the type typically used for gunfire detection.
As a result, the noise from distant gunfire becomes lost in the various vehicle noises. When this occurs, isolation of the gunfire signal from the other vehicle noises is very difficult and results in a large number of false alarms.